Abstract

GANZAROLLI DE OLIVEIRA, João Vicente. Minimum Tribute to Jacques Le Goff: The takeoff of the Medieval Culture and the birth of the West. Enfoques [online]. 2015, vol.27, n.2, pp.29-43. ISSN 1669-2721.

This article has been written as a tribute to the French historian Jacques Le Goff (1924-2014), who dedicated most of his academic life to the subject of the Late Middle Ages. Le Goff's choice was taken when he was still young; and young was also the Western World in this period that we denominate "Middle Ages". Le Goff was modest and his style -whether in his classes, speeches or writings- was marked by mathematical precision. In his Saint Louis(1996) there is a sentence that seems to summarize Le Goff's approach to History: "one cannot write History based on mere ‘ifs'". Le Goff had been frequently honored by some of the most prominent universities in the world. His work is a fundamental mark in what concerns the study of the medieval world and its many different aspects; at the same time it is an essential tool for all those interested in understanding the birth of Europe and the very West as a whole.

Keywords : Jacques Le Goff; Middle Age Culture; Europe; Western World.